Our Imploding Educational System
Education in the U.S. is imploding. The Horatio Alger ideals of education depicting the conditions for successful fulfillment of one’s ambitions have been superseded by the ideas and ideals of John Dewey. His ideals enunciated inSchool and Society and in A Common Faith suggest the replacement of self-conscious, ambitious individuality with the replacement of a highly socialized citizen whose “faith” is in democracy and working together with others as a useful citizen. The great books curricula, popular in the 1890s, was debunked. Despite his romanticization of socialistic concepts (hidden behind the word “democracy,” a tactic not unlike that of Sen. Bernie Sanders), his views represent an attack on the individual, the family, and the foundation of America in Judeo-Christian values.
For millions, school today is simply a developmental requirement with its institutional mores and requirements, a series of hurdles to be overcome and disengaged from as soon as one reaches adulthood. The Deweyan ideal of collectivization and conformity to the industrial demands of mass production of everything from medical care to toilet paper has supplanted the Horatio Alger ideals of pre-industrial, Christian, individualistic American society. Today’s updated Deweyans on the left are more apt to admire Alger Hiss than Horatio Alger.
This writer, having spent decades in secondary and higher education, has perceived that the work ethic is eerily absent. Slaves or deprived/oppressed peoples may work hard, but cannot be said to uphold the work ethic which means a healthy respect and joyful participation in the work at hand as an opportunity coming from a loving God. When we embrace our work with a sense of that work as being part of our moral duty to God and man, we are truly socialized. How many students in our schools have this attitude towards their studies? Or teachers towards their teaching? Instead of study-esteem, we find emphasis on self-esteem. Instead of a vision of becoming a man or woman of competence or knowledge, most educators and students are working towards an implied goal depicted by Abraham Maslow as self-actualization, an ideal of happiness defined as meeting of one’s needs. Meeting of needs rather than competence achieved through knowledge is both a result of and also leads to the left’s attachment to the “gimme gimme” philosophy. Meeting my needs is paramount: me me me.
School reform has not been addressing this shift in purpose, which defines education as helping the students meet their needs, rather than increasing their competence to meet the needs of others, and to become better able to exercise their individual liberty. An informed mind in an individual who is disciplined and virtuous is more likely to reach the goal of happiness described by Plato and Aristotle and by Christian philosophers throughout the centuries. Although our happiness on this Earth is always imperfect, nevertheless when connected to enhancement of individuality, service to others, and competence, happiness becomes more attainable than the vain search to meet one’s needs and to “fit in” with some amorphous, mystical vanity called by Jean-Jacques Rousseau “the general will” or by certain social justice warriors “the state of perfect communist equality.”
School reform is feeding the wet dreams of the bureaucratic organizational manipulators and the empires of educational publishers like Cengage, Houghton Mifflin, McGraw Hill, and Pearson, which are turning out billions of dollars worth of educational software. Reform today is a zeal for statistics, systems, savings, software, and for the federal government setting the parameters for this reform rather than local control. Teachers are increasingly being called “facilitators” who guide students through the technological maze. Students whom Dewey wished to see happily take their places in industrial society are now envisioned to be conforming to the work requirements of a technology-driven society. The system becomes the definitive collective dimension into which the well-adjusted person fits in order to meet his or her needs. The dignity and worth of the individual is being sacrificed in favor of this vision or orientation.
As early as 1977, Christopher Lasch, a liberal, in his classic book The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations, alerted us to the narcissism growing at an exponential rate in society. And as early as 1926, speaking at Congressional hearings, the great Princeton professor J. Grescham Machen argued against expansion of federal involvement in education. He argued that education is not a matter of the State, but should be left to each child’s parents to educate their children as they please. He prophesied the trend we are now seeing, that uniformity in education always leads to the lowest common denominator. Would the reader agree that the lowest common denominator is found in ignorance, disrespect of teachers, lack of attention, and lack of cooperation?
Does one have to be a professor to see that every moral standard in society is collapsing? Goodness and Judeo-Christian values are openly mocked every day on TV and by teachers throughout the land. In schools, condoms are distributed, and sex education indicates no preference for the love-sex-marriage unity being the best paradigm. This writer taught at one inner-city high school where female students could go to a special counseling office for a ten or fifteen-minute meeting with a pregnancy counsellor, and then be referred for an abortion, without notifying a parent or caregiver, which is legal in my state. Another high school where this writer taught had a yearly Senior Cross Dressing Day where any senior males who wished to could come to school wearing a dress, bra, make-up, wig, high heels, nail polish, and eye liner.
Schools give us examples of behavior and communicate attitudes of teachers and administrators. Methods of learning and spoken as well as unspoken assumptions about the purpose of gaining knowledge shape our understanding of the purpose and meaning of learning and life. With the schools no longer operating in loco parentis but instead seeking parental support for the so-called mission of the schools, the schools -- with many false values -- are shaping and negatively impacting our expectations, hopes, decisions, and what matters we focus our attention upon.
The "body of knowledge" for each subject should come back to the fore as the key to a meaningful education and not merely statistics about graduation rates, passing rates on standardized tests, and the implementation of tablets, smart boards, and other software innovations. We also need to restore prayer in the schools, family values, and patriotism (where the inspirational aspects of the U.S.A. and Western civilization are placed front and center rather than themes of oppression and victimization). If the reader does not think this is possible, please pray for it.
With Common Core State [sic] Standards, we are on the very brink of the wholly manipulated society (notice, "manipulated," not educated). Our system of public education is becoming depersonalized and loveless to an extreme, and where knowledge and character building were once paramount, we now find emphasis on self-esteem and neglect of essential intellectual and practical skills. Mass deception and hypocrisy about education has never been more rife.
E. Jeffrey Ludwig is a Harvard University Master Teacher who has been listed multiple times in Who’s Who Among America’s High School Teachers and served on the Editorial Board of the Harvard Educational Review. His latest book, The Catastrophic Decline of America’s Public High Schools, is availablehere. Despite his Harvard training, he continues to believe in local control over schools as required by the Tenth Amendment, and is opposed to all elitist takeover strategies.
Are Millennials Educable?
Are Millennials Educable?
Picture
ten-year-old Johnny, his masculinity threatened on every level, his mental and
physical energy denied expression, his home life hectic and unsupportive, his
continued inability to read becoming more debilitating every year, and his
boredom level off any available chart. Imagine being
him. We know that his disadvantages will not be met in
5th grade any more than they were in 1st. We know – looking at
the recent educational studies – that in seven years, he will graduate, in much
the same condition, if he graduates at all. Given the odd assumption
that graduation proves effective education, and the pressure schools are under
to up graduation numbers, he probably will walk away with a diploma, but it
will be meaningless.
We
know that the graduation rate and the proficiency levels no longer correlate at
all. Over 80%
of our high school seniors "earn"
diplomas, but 37% of
them can read at grade level. Twenty-five
percent of them can do math at grade
level. And yet our schools are more concerned about programming
young people for sexual deviancy and multicultural hatred of their own country
than they are in turning out thinking, informed, skilled adults.
Why
can't our schools fix this problem? There are many answers –
teachers' unions, left-leaning educational institutions, leftist textbooks,
etc. But our schools are filled with wonderful teachers working
appalling hours and wanting desperately to see their students
learn. What is in their way? How is it these kids can get
all the way through 13 years of schooling and know nothing?
Look
back at Johnny. In first grade, he didn't learn to read, but what
happened to him? He went on to 2nd grade, where he had even less
opportunity to figure it out. But did he stay in 2nd grade or a
remedial class until he caught on? No. On to
3rd, where his dismal scores on standardized tests demonstrate clearly his
inabilities, but still nothing will be done.
One
year, during my tenure as a high school English teacher, we were required to
attend evening classes instructing us in how to teach our students to read – in
addition to everything else we were supposed to be inculcating. The
lessons in these classes were all geared to 3rd grade, which bothered us
all – if this approach didn't work when these kids were eight-year-olds, why
would it work when they're 17? I asked about the viability of this approach
for high school, and the instructor admitted that they had no idea how to
rescue a teenager who had never mastered reading.
Fifty
years ago, schools quit holding Johnny back a grade when he didn't reach the
set standards. Administrators deemed it too rough on his ego to
admit his problem and fix it. We would damage his self-esteem, and
we heard over and over again that the self-esteem deficit would render any
increase in skill null and void. No one ever proved that, but say
something often enough, and it becomes gospel. No one considered
what damage Johnny's ego would sustain in high school when reading and writing
and computing skills were both assumed and necessary.
Once
the schools cannot hold kids back because they haven't mastered reading and
math, then subsequent teachers are under pressure – political, professional,
and pragmatic – to keep the momentum going.
Some
dumbing down has to happen if a teacher has a classroom full of students below
grade level. There is nothing to be gained by failing them
all. And as teachers, we are taught to meet our students where they
actually are. That is good pedagogy.
However,
if an instructor's students don't meet the standard, the teacher gets in
trouble, the students become demoralized, and the parents get
angry. Angry parents make for nervous and defensive administrators
who, in turn, pressure the teachers into – what? Passing the
students whether they've cleared the hurdles or not.
This
continues until high school when the problem just blows up. Unless
the district chooses to do what my district did: we "raised the
bar." You've got to love educational jargon. We did
this by:
1.
Cutting out the "D" as a grade option – which merely inflated the
grades.
2.
Demanding that students turn in all assignments. I
know: this doesn't seem out of line, but most students miss an assignment now
and then, and no one could see that a do-or-die turn-in policy only erased the
ability to insist on due dates. We couldn't legally fail a kid for
being late on an assignment. One of my students said to me one day,
"Ah, due dates, schmue dates." Kids were turning in papers
months late, and we had to accept them.
3.
Forcing kids into honors-level classes whether they are capable or
not. And then when too many began failing, the administration
demanded that teachers dumb down the curricula. Then the following
year, students were assigned to the next level up, and they weren't ready to do
the work, because the previous curricula had been so simplified. That
was "raising the bar."
Then
these kids go off to college, and the colleges face the same
problems. I'd like very much to increase the rigor of the college
classes I teach – in spite of the fact that transfer students find my classes
much more rigorous than their state junior college classes have
been. But if I really expected kids to actually function at what we
used to call "college" level, they'd fail. It's
mind-boggling, and frustrating, and knowing where it came from is not much
help.
It's
not as if we don't know what can be done about it. In the last
couple of decades, brain research has taught us quite a bit about how the brain
learns. We know that the more background knowledge a child has,
the better
a reader he will be – yet we spend most of
the school day drilling kids on "reading skills" rather than teaching
them anything factual. We know that movement plays a big role in
brain development, yet we cut back on recess. We know music and art
improve brain function, but we cut art.
We
must remember that the original purpose of John Dewey's educational scheme
never was to produce thinking, critical, knowledgeable human
beings. It was to create drones. We have succeeded in
that.
Plus,
the society in general discourages facing ugly truths and makes pretending
fairly easy for a long period of time, but here in 2018, it's clear that the
make-believe fairy tale is over. Millennials are finding that they
are tens of thousands of dollars in debt, yet they know little that is actually
true. They have learned attitudes but not facts. We've
hit that wall.
What
does public education do? Nothing. I've been involved,
either willingly or otherwise, in half a dozen educational reforms designed to
fix our problems. They all fail. The solution lies
outside the auspices of government and teacher unions. The
responsibility for educating our young has to start with the family. It
can easily blossom into private enterprise, charter schools, and school
vouchers. The homeschooling industry is thriving, and so are the
students educated at home.
For
the last nine years, I've been involved in building a school, a Bible-based
junior college. Accreditation took us that long, and raising money
isn't easy, but it can be done. We can crawl out from under the
crushing weight of a system devoid of reality. We just have to
begin.
Deana
Chadwell blogs at www.ASingleWindow.com. She
is also an adjunct professor and department head at Pacific Bible College in
southern Oregon. She teaches writing and public speaking.
Ivanka
Trump Wants America to Kick Addiction to Four-Year College, Massive Student
Debt
https://www.breitbart.com/economy/2019/03/21/ivanka-trump-wants-america-kick-addiction-four-year-college/
SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images
America’s ever-deepening college
debt problem is really a symptom of a worse malady: our societal addiction to
college itself.
you can't separate the Obomb from his Saudis paymasters!
Sympathetic
biographer Liza Mundy writes, “Michelle frequently deplores the modern reliance
on test scores, describing herself as a person who did not test well.” She did
not write well either. Mundy charitably describes her senior thesis,
"Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community," as “dense
and turgid.”
REALITY CHECK: MEXICANS WHO JUMP OUR
BORDERS AND THEIR ANCHOR BABIES LOATHE ENGLISH AND LITERACY AND HAVE TURNED
CA'S LOWER EDUCATION INTO THE WORST IN THE NATION!
"FOR ITS PART, Just Communities claims its trainings
are aimed at closing what it characterizes as an achievement gap between Latino
and white students."
CALIFORNIA
Leftist group “Just Communities” is in the legal crosshairs.
Adios, Sanctuary La Raza
Welfare State of California
AMERICA:
MEXICO’S WELFARE STATE
… and in
exchange we get 40 million Mexican flag wavers, homelessness, a housing crisis,
heroin & opioid crisis and jobs for legals crisis…. ALL THANKS TO THE
DEMOCRAT PARTY
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2013/08/how-cheap-is-staggering-cost-of-mexicos.html
“Thirteen years after welfare
reform, the share of immigrant-headed households (legal and illegal) with a
child (under age 18) using at least one welfare program continues to be very
high. This is partly due to the large share of immigrants with low levels of education
and their resulting low incomes — not their legal status or an unwillingness to
work. The major welfare programs examined in this report include cash
assistance, food assistance, Medicaid, and public and subsidized housing.” Steven A. Camarota
“Thirteen
years after welfare reform, the share of immigrant-headed households (legal and
illegal) with a child (under age 18) using at least one welfare program
continues to be very high. This is partly due to the large share of immigrants
with low levels of education and their resulting low incomes — not their legal
status or an unwillingness to work. The major welfare programs examined in this
report include cash assistance, food assistance, Medicaid, and public and
subsidized housing.” Steven A. Camarota
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2017/08/heres-reason-why-ca-schools-are-no.html
“Mexicans abhor
education. In their country, illiteracy dominates. As they arrive in our
country, only 9.6 percent of fourth generation Mexicans earn a high school
diploma. Mexico does not promote
educational values. This makes them the least educated of any Americans or
immigrants. The rate of illiteracy in Mexico stands at 63 percent." FROSTY
WOOLRIDGE
“Third-generation Latinos are more often
disconnected — that is, they neither attend school nor find employment.” Kay S. Hymowitz
IMPORTING ILLITERACY
TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED WE NEED
ENDLESS HORDES OF ILLITERATES JUMPING OUR BORDERS AND JOBS!
That really build a nation? Or
just generate “cheap” labor for fast food operators?
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2017/11/daca-fails-loathing-of-literacy-and.html
Pollak: Educating Illegal Aliens and Their Children Costs L.A.
Schools Hundreds of Millions Per Year
Robyn Beck / AFP / Getty
The ongoing strike by the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) union
against the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is about teacher pay,
classroom size, support staff, and especially charter schools, which the union
says take money away from the district.
Why the Hispanic Education Gap?
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/10/why_the_hispanic_education_gap.html
I
obtained financial aid and scholarships to help pay for college and later grad
school. I graduated with my B.A. with almost no
debt. Money was not the issue for me, and if one's willing to jump
through hoops, college can be paid for. The difficulties after
getting into college were in finding peers I could look up to; coming across
ways not to feel inferior to my classmates; discovering where I belonged in a
sea of students who did not share my culture or customs; and finding ways to
separate myself from my family, who constantly needed me.
One cautionary example is
President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, whose ticket into Harvard,
according to the 2006 book The Price of Admission:
How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges, was his father’s $2.5
million dollar gift to the university. Jared got his Harvard degree, but he has
been the butt of social-media taunts precisely because his daddy had to pay a
fortune to get the school to admit him. The cost of a brag-worthy degree?
Millions. The cost of the right- and left-brain stuff? Priceless.
CITY
JOURNAL
WHAT
THE COLLEGE-ADMISSIONS
SCANDAL TELL US ABOUT AMERICA’S
BROKEN MERITOCRACY
SCANDAL TELL US ABOUT AMERICA’S
BROKEN MERITOCRACY
If, like
me, you’re an avid observer of human affairs at their most vain and
status-crazed, you have been studying the College Cheating Scandal, or what
investigators called Operation Varsity Blues, with all the intensity of a rabbinical
scholar poring over Leviticus. Each reading yields delicious new details of
greed, ambition, hypocrisy, and decadence. “Ah! Vanitas, Vanitatum!” as the
author of the classic nineteenth-century novel Vanity Fair sighed. But eventually the mordant fun gives way to the
recognition that what we have here is evidence of a serious sickness in the
American meritocracy.
The story
is well known by now, but before it disappears into the overflowing landfill of
tawdry contemporary Americana, some of its more obscure gems deserve a farewell
salute. Let’s begin with the master of ceremonies, William “Rick” Singer, owner
of a Newport Beach, California college-consulting company. Singer bribed
college coaches and staged mockups of his clients’ slacker children at athletic
events, sometimes photoshopping their faces onto a picture of actual soccer
players or rowers, or, weirdly, pole-vaulters. A 36-year-old Harvard grad, Mark
Riddell, could take a standardized test and get an agreed-upon, specific score
with the precision of an expert archer. Singer hired him to take or to correct
tests for clients whose preliminary scores would put them on the reject pile:
Riddell is now Cooperating Witness #2. My favorite bit of chicanery was
Singer’s money-laundering operation. To hide the eye-catching sums that he was
earning for his ploys—and to give his clients the extra perk of a (legal) tax
deduction for their (illegal) contributions—Singer set up the Key Worldwide
Foundation, which he advertised as “provid[ing] guidance, encouragement and
opportunity to disadvantaged students around the world.” The IRS estimates that
Singer earned $25 million for his good works.
The
charitable donors are a treasure trove of you-can’t-make-this-stuff-up farce.
Jane Buckingham, Beverly Hills mother and businesswoman, paid Singer $50,000 to
have Ridell take her son’s ACT for him so that he could score high enough to
get into the University of Southern California; Ridell got the boy a 35 out of
36. Earlier in her career, Buckingham had parlayed her expertise as a “youth
marketing specialist” into a TV show, Job or No Job, offering millennials
career advice. Evidently she forgot what she told an interviewer at the Observerwhen she
described some of the young people who came on her show as “so entitled that
you want to slap them.” Another donor was Willkie Farr & Gallagher co-chair
Gordon Caplan, named as The American Lawyer’s 2018 Dealmaker of the
Year.
Also in the lineup are actress Felicity Huffman and her husband William Macy,
most recently star of a television series called—will the dark irony never
stop?—Shameless. For reasons not entirely clear, Macy has not yet been
indicted.
First
prize for sheer gall goes to actress Lori Loughlin and her fashion-designer
husband Massimo Giannulli. The two paid Singer a half-million to package their
daughters as accomplished rowers in order to buy their place in the University
of Southern California freshman class, though evidently neither girl knew the
difference between a coxswain and an entry on Pornhub. Nor, at least in
Olivia’s case, were they thinking much about their course load. As it happens,
Olivia spent the first week of school in Fiji. She wasn’t there to visit the
renowned libraries of the South Pacific, but for a photo shoot in her role as a
“social media influencer.” Using the stage name Olivia Jade, she video-splained
to her 1.9 million followers that, while she would be doing a lot of traveling
for her career, “I do want the experience of, like, game days, partying. I
don’t really care about school, as you guys all know.”
A few
final, irresistible details about the dewy Loughlin: the actress made her name
on the hit sitcom Full House. She played Aunt Becky
to the golden-girl Olsen twins. Aunt Becky was supposed to be the show’s moral
compass; in one episode, she marched into the office of a preschool admissions
director to tell on her husband for lying on his niece’s application. Back in
the real world, Loughlin went on to groom her own daughter for a future on the
red carpet—witness the Internet photos of the luminous mother and daughter
posing at celebrity events and gabbing on The Today Show. It seems unlikely that Olivia Jade could have
collected her Sephora, Amazon, and Dolce Gabbana deals on her own; her doting
mother was the influencer there. In short, the Hallmark-wholesome Aunt Becky
turns out to be a modern-day Becky Sharp.
This kind
of arrogance, greed, and ambition has been the stuff of literary satire and
philosophical reflection throughout the ages. What sets Operation Varsity Blues
apart and caused the public outrage, of course, is its American context. The
parents were not seeking riches, fame, or even elite status in any conventional
sense: they already had that. Between the two of them, Felicity Huffman and
Bill Macy are estimated to be worth $45 million; their daughters would never be
lacking in American Express black cards or invitations to friends’ Aspen
chalets. Olivia Jade was already on her way to online stardom, at least within
her peer group.
No, they
were not looking for financial rewards or klieg lights. What they wanted was
for their kids to fit in as members of the cognitive elite. Anand Giridharadas,
NBC political analyst and fire-and-brimstone scourge of America’s richest,
tweeted about the scandal that America’s ruling class “confuses its privilege
for merit.” That’s exactly backward. The Operation Varsity parents opened their
wallets precisely because they knew their children did not have the right stuff. They wanted elite status for their
children, and in a meritocracy, even one as tattered as our own, high SATs and
extracurriculars leading to a hoity-toity college degree are the ticket. The
parents of Operation Varsity will probably get over the humiliation of a
mugshot, but their kids will never live down being outed as meritocratic
losers.
Which
takes us to the only good news in this whole sordid affair: buying your way
into cognitive-elite respectability is trickier than anyone thought. Even if
you avoid jail, you are surrounded by people who are expert at sniffing out
meritocratic poseurs, namely those with modest IQs. One cautionary example is
President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, whose ticket into Harvard,
according to the 2006 book The Price of Admission:
How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges, was his father’s $2.5
million dollar gift to the university. Jared got his Harvard degree, but he has
been the butt of social-media taunts precisely because his daddy had to pay a
fortune to get the school to admit him. The cost of a brag-worthy degree?
Millions. The cost of the right- and left-brain stuff? Priceless.
The
current system of college admission doesn’t have many defenders at this point.
Everyone knows that it corrupts us all: the high school teachers who feel
obliged to inflate the talents of their ordinary students, the therapists
selling their professional credentials to parents who want special-disability
diagnoses for their healthy kids so that they have extra time to take their
exams, the middle-class parents who have neither the funds nor the stomach to
violate the law but help create the panic that is driving their kids (and their
educators) out of their minds. Worst of all, it demoralizes less-advantaged
kids and their parents, who are already tempted toward resentment-filled
hopelessness.
For all
higher education’s sins, though, there’s no easy way to fix its role in the
broken meritocracy. Limit legacies and sports admits? Sure. Look skeptically at
résumés filled with service trips to Guatemalan villages and computer camps?
Yes, please. But an increasingly high-tech economy will have to reward those
who can decipher complicated deals, program robots, and pursue similarly
complex cognitive tasks. The challenge is to reduce the prestige and honor
attached to those talents and rewards—and to the schools that develop them.
Ironically, Operation Varsity Blues may be a step in that direction.
NOW WHY
SHOULD AMERICANS (LEGALS) PAY FOR AN EDUCATION WHEN THE SWAMP KEEPER TRUMP IS
BRINGING OVER BOATLOADS OF “CHEAP” LABOR WHO ALL RECEIVED FREE EDUCATIONS?!?!
Ivanka
Trump Wants America to Kick Addiction to Four-Year College, Massive Student
Debt
https://www.breitbart.com/economy/2019/03/21/ivanka-trump-wants-america-kick-addiction-four-year-college/
JOHN CARNEY
America’s ever-deepening college
debt problem is really a symptom of a worse malady: our societal addiction to
college itself.
Any sober assessment of the facts would indicate that too many
Americans are going to college. As a result, college costs—and debt—have
skyrocketed while the rewards for college have plunged.
Yet this is something that has escaped the attention of our
political elites. And, as it turns out, our financial and cultural elites—as
the recent college admissions scandal indicates. Many Democrats want to
double-down, promising “free college” to young people—a euphemism for college
funded by taxpayers.
Perhaps surprisingly, Ivy-league educated Ivanka Trump has
recently come out as a skeptic about America’s love affair with college. The
first daughter has taken up a leadership role in the Trump administration’s
workforce development efforts—and shown a remarkable candidness when it comes
to our college problem.
“I think culturally, for a long time we have created and
perpetuated the narrative that there is one pathway to achieving the American
dream and its four-year university,” Ms. Trump said in a recent interview.
Trump goes on:
That has been instilled into American students, it’s often
American parents that feel that is the only viable path. So you have kids going
into school racking up enormous amounts of student debt that they’ll often take
decades if there ever able to pay it off without a skill, if they ultimately
graduate. So I think opening up the prism and saying there are many different
pathways. It depends what you want in your life and taking the stigma away from
those who choose alternative pathways who choose technical schools, vocational
education. At the end of the day, it’s about connecting workers with their
passion, with their jobs. There’s very little opportunity for somebody who
wants to the vocational route, the technical route because all the money pushes
you into a four-year college system.
Just as her father drew attention to the incredibly bad hand
American industrial workers had been dealt by decades of anti-American trade
deals, Ms. Trump is drawing attention to the bad hand the U.S. has dealt our
young people.
The facts are stark. Over the past
40 years, the U.S. has doubled the share of
high school graduates who go on to get college degrees. Forty-six percent of
high school graduates receive degrees from four-year colleges, and another 24
percent get degrees from two-year colleges.
This increase in college education, however, has come at a steep
cost. The relative benefits of a college degree have been declining for nearly
two decades, while costs have been escalating. College graduates still
earn more than high school graduates and are less likely to be unemployed—but
the gap has been contracting.
And the income and employment
benefits may overstate the lifetime effects of college degrees. The college
wealth premium—the amount of extra wealth college graduates have accumulate the
course of their lifetime—has declined even more rapidly than the income and
employment premium, according to a recent study by the
Federal Reserve. And among blacks, Hispanics, Asians—that is, everyone except
whites—there is no wealth premium at all, the study found.
After ten years, nearly one-third of
college graduates wind up in a job that does not require a college degree,
the Wall Street Journal reports.
That should not be surprising. It demonstrates that the supply
of college graduates has outpaced demand, which is exactly what you would
expect would happen when ample subsidies and societal pressure are applied to
increase college attendance. When, as Ms. Trump put it, “all the money pushes
you into a four-year college system.”
The average sticker-price of a
four-year college, including room and board, is now $50,000 per year. As Barron’s Jack Hough
recently pointed out, $200,000
in cash invested in the name of a 22 year old would produce a $3 million
retirement nest egg by the age of 68, if the money is invested at about a 6%
year return.
This high price is being financed by
debt. On average, a college graduate owes twice as much debt as she did twenty
years ago, according to the Wall
Street Journal. Educational loans now amount to more than
$1.5 trillion. More than one out of ten student loan borrowers will default on
their loans.
Federal Reserve economists
recently studied the impact
all that debt is having on those aged 24 to 32. They found that while it plays
a significant role in keeping young people from buying homes, although other
factors—including the high price of homes—were more important.
“In surveys, young adults commonly report that their student
loan debts are preventing them from buying a home,” Fed researchers Alvaro
Mezza, Daniel Ringo, and Kamila Sommer found. “Our estimates suggest that
increases in student loan debt are an important factor in explaining their
lowered homeownership rates, but not the central cause of the decline.”
This is having a profound effect on American society. People are
getting married later, which reduces the number of children they have. Women,
in particular, delay marriage when they bear lots of student debt. And a
significant number of people who say they do not want children cited student
debt as the reason.
Twenty-two percent of college
graduates were delayed by at least two years in moving out of a family member’s
home due to their student loans, a survey of millennials by the National Association of Realtors found. More than
half of respondents said they were delayed in continuing their education or
starting a family due to student loan debt.
Bernie Sanders and others who have endorsed the idea of
relieving students of the burden of paying for college address the debt side of
the problem only. And it’s not clear that this is really much progress at all
since professors will still have to be paid, buildings maintained, textbooks
purchased. So while a student might not have to foot the bill, that debt will
need to be borne by workers—which is really just a transformation of individual
debt into higher taxes. And if history is any experience, the government will
not effectively be able to contain the burgeoning costs. If anything, quite the
opposite: cost increases will accelerate once individuals no longer see the
bills.
There’s no such thing as a free lunch, even if in a college
cafeteria.
The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. We
have a problem, as Ms. Trump has indicated. Others in Washington, DC, should
take note.
you can't separate the Obomb from his Saudis paymasters!
Barack
Obama’s back door, however, was unique to him. Before prosecutors send some of
the dimmer Hollywood stars to the slammer for their dimness, they might want to
ask just how much influence a Saudi billionaire peddled to get Obama into
Harvard.
BARACK OBAMA and his SAUDIS PAYMASTERS: Did they build
his Muslim tower in Chicago?
Malia,
Michelle, Barack and the College Admissions Scandal
What
shocked even the old timers in my hometown was that Mayor Hugh Addonizio, the
man who gave me my Eagle Scout Award, would accept kickbacks in cash right
across his desk. They were troubled less by his criminality -- that was
expected in Newark -- than by his lack of subtlety. Addonizio paid for his
indiscretion with a lengthy prison sentence.
So
it is with the current college admissions scandal. People have been scamming
their ways into prestige universities for decades, maybe centuries, but in the
past they have had the good sense not to put the cash on the table. It seems
that in this scandal a few of the bribers and their brokers may well pay for
their indiscretion with prison sentences as well.
The
media pretend to be shocked. In an editorial on the scandal, the New YorkTimes singled out Harvard
University for its “special admissions preferences and back doors for certain
applicants.” This is the same New York Times, however, that
published an entirely uncritical article three years prior headlined, “Malia Obama Rebels, Sort
of, by Choosing Harvard.”
Malia is the fourth member of the Obama family to attend that
august university, none of whom, save perhaps for Grandpa Obama, deserved to be
there.
Let’s
start with Obama Sr., the only member of the extended family to attend college
before the affirmative action/diversity era. Obama arrived at Harvard in the
early 1960s with the goal of getting a Ph.D. in economics. According to
biographer Sally Jacobs, Obama “struggled” with his studies but managed to get
a Masters degree.
Alas,
the university booted him on moral grounds before he could get his doctorate.
An inveterate playboy despite his two ongoing marriages, Obama had an affair
with a high-school girl. Denied his Ph.D., says Jacobs, “He goes on to claim
the title, nonetheless. He's Dr. Obama. The older he gets, the more he claims
it.” As will be seen, intellectual fraud runs in the family.
Michelle was the next to attend Harvard, in her case Harvard Law
School. “Told by counselors that her SAT scores and her grades
weren’t good enough for an Ivy League school,” writes Christopher Andersen
in Barack and Michelle, “Michelle applied to Princeton and
Harvard anyway.”
The less charitable
Christopher Hitchens observed, “To describe [the thesis] as hard to read
would be a mistake; the thesis cannot be ‘read’ at all, in the strict sense of
the verb. This is because it wasn't written in any known language.” Hitchens
exaggerated only a little. The following summary statement by Michelle
captures her unfamiliarity with many of the rules of grammar and most of logic:
The study inquires
about the respondents' motivations to benefit him/herself, and the following
social groups: the family, the Black community, the White community, God and
church, The U.S. society, the non-White races of the world, and the human
species as a whole.
Michelle even typed badly.
Still, she was admitted to and graduated from Princeton and Harvard Law.
I have been told by those on the inside that there are ways of recognizing
affirmative-action admissions. Still, one almost feels sorry for Michelle.
She was in so far over her head it is no wonder she projected her angst onto
the white people around her. “Regardless of the circumstances underwhich
[sic] I interact with whites at Princeton,” she wrote in the opening of
her thesis, “it often seems as if, to them, I will always be black first and a
student second."
Barack was the smarter and better
educated half of the couple. That said, had Obama’s father come from Kentucky
not Kenya and been named O’Hara not Obama, there would been no Harvard
Law Review, no Harvard, no Columbia.
In his overly friendly
biography, The Bridge, David Remnick writes that Obama was
an “unspectacular” student in his two years at Columbia and at every stop
before that going back to grade school. A Northwestern University prof who wrote a letter of
reference for Obama reinforces the point, telling Remnick, “I don’t think
[Obama] did too well in college.” As to Obama’s LSAT scores, Jimmy Hoffa’s body
will be unearthed before those are.
How such an indifferent student got
into a law school whose applicants’ LSAT scores typically track between 98 to
99 percentile and whose GPAs range between 3.80 and 4.00 is a subject Remnick
avoids.
Obama does too. Although he has
admitted that he “undoubtedly benefited from affirmative action programs” during
his academic career, he has remained mum about some reported “back door”
influence peddling that may have been as useful to him as affirmative action.
In late March 2008 the venerable
African-American entrepreneur and politico Percy Sutton appeared on a local New
York City show called "Inside City Hall." When asked about Obama by
the show’s host, Dominic Carter, the former Manhattan borough president calmly
and lucidly explained that he had been “introduced to [Obama] by a friend.”
The friend's name was Dr. Khalid
al-Mansour, and the introduction had taken place about twenty years prior.
Sutton described al-Mansour as "the principal adviser to one of the
world's richest men." The billionaire in question was Saudi prince
Al-Waleed bin Talal, the same billionaire whose anti-Semitism caused Mayor Rudy
Giuliani to reject his $10 million gift to New York City post 9/11.
According to Sutton, al-Mansour had
asked him to "please write a letter in support of [Obama]... a young man
that has applied to Harvard." Sutton had friends at Harvard and gladly did
so.
Three months before the election it
should have mattered that a respected black political figure had publicly
announced that an unapologetic anti-Semite like al-Mansour, backed by an
equally anti-Semitic Saudi billionaire, had been guiding Obama’s career perhaps
for the last twenty years, but the story died a quick and unnatural death.
As for Malia, whose grades and scores
are as much a state secret as her father’s, the old man damns with the faint
praise of “capable” and “conscientious.” But hell, Bill’s daughter
Chelsea got into Stanford and George’s daughter Barbara got into Yale, so this
particular path to the back door was well worn.
Barack Obama’s back door,
however, was unique to him. Before prosecutors send some of the dimmer
Hollywood stars to the slammer for their dimness, they might want to ask just
how much influence a Saudi billionaire peddled to get Obama into Harvard.
REALITY CHECK: MEXICANS WHO JUMP OUR
BORDERS AND THEIR ANCHOR BABIES LOATHE ENGLISH AND LITERACY AND HAVE TURNED
CA'S LOWER EDUCATION INTO THE WORST IN THE NATION!
"FOR ITS PART, Just Communities claims its trainings
are aimed at closing what it characterizes as an achievement gap between Latino
and white students."
Here’s one teacher’s report on the
illegals in our schools.
TEACHER’S POSTING:
Subject: Cheap Labor This should make
everyone think, be you Democrat, Republican or Independent from a California
school teacher.
"As you listen to the news about the
student protests over illegal immigration, there are some things that you
should be aware of: I am in charge of the English-as-a-second-language
department at a large southern California high school which is designated a
Title 1 school, meaning that its students average lower socioeconomic and
income levels. Most of the schools you are hearing about, South Gate High, Bell
Gardens, Huntington Park, etc., where these students are protesting, are also
Title 1 schools. Title 1 schools are on the free breakfast and free
lunch program. When I say free breakfast, I'm not talking a glass of milk and
roll -- but a full breakfast and cereal bar with fruits and juices that would
make a Marriott proud. The waste of this food is monumental, with
trays and trays of it being dumped in the trash uneaten. (OUR TAX
DOLLARS AT WORK) I estimate that well over 50% of these students are
obese or at least moderately overweight. About 75% or more DO have cell phones.
The school also provides day care centers for the unwed teenage pregnant girls
(some as young as 13) so they can attend class without the inconvenience of
having to arrange for babysitters or having family watch their kids. (OUR
TAX DOLLARS AT WORK) I was ordered to spend $700,000 on my department
or risk losing funding for the upcoming year even though there was little need
for anything; my budget was already substantial. I ended up buying new
computers for the computer learning center, half of which, one month later,
have been carved with graffiti by the appreciative students who obviously feel
humbled and grateful to have a free education in America. (OUR TAX
DOLLARS A T WORK) I have had to intervene several times for young and
substitute teachers whose classes consist of many illegal immigrant students
here in the country less then 3 months who raised so much hell with the female
teachers, calling them "Putas" whores and throwing things that the
teachers were in tears. Free medical, free education, free food, day care etc.,
etc., etc. Is it any wonder they feel entitled to not only be in this country
but to demand rights, privileges and entitlements? To those who want to point
out how much these illegal immigrants contribute to our society because they
LIKE their gardener and housekeeper and they like to pay less for tomatoes:
spend some time in the real world of illegal immigration and see the TRUE
costs.
PARENTS SUE TO FIGHT
ANTI-WHITE, ANTI-
MALE, ANTI-CHRISTIAN,
COMMUNIST
INDOCTRINATION IN
CALIFORNIA
Leftist group “Just Communities” is in the legal crosshairs.
February
22, 2019
Parents in Santa Barbara,
California, are suing a leftist hate group called Just Communities and
the local school board there to end the group’s taxpayer-funded so-called
implicit bias training that has a powerful anti-white, anti-male, and
anti-Christian slant.
The
lawsuit, filed in federal court in Los Angeles, was brought by Fair
Education Santa Barbara, a nonprofit formed by parents of children enrolled in
the Santa Barbara Unified School District (SBUSD).
The group’s lawyer, Eric Early,
calls the curriculum used in the district “radical, discriminatory, and
illegal.” In a letter to the district’s counsel last September he wrote that
“[t]eachers, parents and students have confidentially expressed their concerns
that … [the] discriminatory curriculum has led to increased racial animosity
toward Caucasian teachers and students.”
Just Communities (its
full name is Just
Communities Central Coast) has a contract with the Santa Barbara
Unified School District to indoctrinate young people into believing that
America today is a manifestly immoral, cruel country in which white people
routinely oppress non-whites, men oppress women, Christians oppress
non-Christians, heterosexuals oppress gays, and the wealthy oppress the poor.
In Pedagogy of the Oppressed,
Marxist theorist Paulo Freire urged that schools be used to inculcate radical
values in students to transform them into agents of social change. Freire
argued that the so-called dominant pedagogy “silences” poor and minority
children and that there is no such thing as a neutral educational system.
Teachers today are also smitten with the ahistorical, anti-American screeds of
Howard Zinn, a Communist Party USA member whose writings they treat as gospel.
Early said the lawsuit aims to
halt what he calls a “creeping, social justice warrior, alt-left takeover of
the Santa Barbara Unified School District.”
The lawsuit “is doing its best
to stop this outfit, Just
Communities Central Coast, from continuing to indoctrinate the
teachers and young, vulnerable minds of the district with Alinskyist training
and beliefs,” Early said.
“The bottom line is it’s time
to stop the far-left indoctrination of the district’s teachers and students and
it’s time to bring to light what’s really going on in these classrooms to
parents who had no idea before this came to light.”
The legal complaint states the
SBUSD has “wholeheartedly supported and promoted JCCC’s discriminatory program”
and has paid the group more than $1 million since 2013. On Sept. 11, 2018, the
school board “considered contracting with JCCC for [an] additional 4 years at a
cost to the taxpayers of more than $1.7 million.” On Oct. 8, 2018, the board
“renewed its contract with JCCC for another year at a cost to the taxpayers of
nearly $300,000.”
SBUSD, according to the
complaint, is violating the U.S. Constitution and Title VI of the Civil Rights
Act of 1964 “as they discriminate on the basis of … race” by “intentionally
supporting, promoting and implementing JCCC’s programming in SBUSD’s schools
with knowledge of its racially discriminatory content and application, which
has created a racially hostile educational environment for many teachers and
students.”
Fair Education Santa Barbara
wants the court to terminate Just
Communities’ contract with the school district and filed for a
preliminary injunction to freeze the contract while the lawsuit proceeds. The
motion for an injunction and other pending motions are expected to be heard by
the court in Los Angeles this Monday, Feb. 25.
Fair Education says the
injunction is justified because a California statute provides that when a
public actor like a school district wants to hire people to do certain work for
the district, with very limited exceptions the contracts have to be submitted
for public bidding, which was not done in this case.
For its part, Just Communities claims
its trainings are aimed at closing what it characterizes as an achievement gap
between Latino and white students. Critics counter that the group is trying to
turn students into left-wing revolutionaries by encouraging them to become
political activists who view the world through the Marxist lens of race, sex,
and class.
The complaint states that
“[u]nder the guise of promoting so-called ‘unconscious bias’ and ‘inclusivity’
instruction, JCCC’s actual curriculum and practices are overtly and
intentionally anti-Caucasian, anti-male, and anti-Christian.”
The training materials used
by Just Communities are
similar to those used by the extreme-left Southern Poverty Law Center. The
SPLC had
to pay almost $3.4 million in 2018 to settle a lawsuit with former
Islamic radical Maajid Nawaz whom it falsely labeled an anti-Muslim extremist.
America is a deeply racist
country, according to the Marxist-influenced, politically correct training
materials. White people enjoy special “privilege” because they are white and
gain “[u]nearned access to resources that enhance one’s chances of getting what
one needs or influencing others in order to lead a safe, productive, fulfilling
life.”
“Oppression based on notions of
race is pervasive in U.S. society and many other societies and hurts us all,
although in different and distinct ways,” the material also states.
It continues, describing
“classism” as “[a] system of oppression based on socio-economic class that
privilege (white) people who are wealthy and target people (of color) who are
poor or working class. Classism also refers to the economic system that creates
excessive inequality and causes basic human needs to go unmet.”
“The work of dismantling racism
is an ongoing process, not a one-time event, seminar, or course from which one
graduates,” the material states. “The process calls for a lifelong commitment
to eliminating all injustice."
“Just Communities’ bigoted indoctrination is
the very antithesis of our aspirational goals for all students,” James Fenkner
of Fair Education Santa Barbara told FrontPage via
email.
Fenkner has four daughters,
three of whom attend school in the school district.
“I fully support the suit
because I fundamentally believe that everyone should be judged upon the quality
of their character, not the color of their skin,” he said. “Just Communities’
divisive curriculum, as evidence by their grotesque ‘Forms of Oppression,’ poisons
the well of goodwill between all children and perpetuates the dead-end notions
of group victimhood, guilt, and retribution.”
The “Forms
of Oppression” grid to which Fenkner refers is part
of a
bundle of teaching materials used by Just Communities. The
horizontal table states, for example, that “racism” is a “form of oppression”
that the “privilege group” of “white people” use to take aim at the “target
group” of “people of color.” The grid uses the same format to describe
“sexism,” “heterosexism,” “classism,” and so on.
Jarrod Schwartz, executive
director of Just
Communities, denied the substance of the allegations against his
group, according to the Santa
Barbara Independent.
“It’s not who we are, not what
we do,” Schwartz said. “The work is not about blame or guilt,” he said. “We’re
very intentional about not saying people are oppressors. It’s systems that are
unequal.”
Santa Barbara’s education
sector has become infected with doctrinaire radicalism.
Santa Barbara City College
adjunct professor Celeste Barber appeared on
“Fox & Friends” Jan. 30 to tell how she was heckled at a Jan. 24 meeting of
the college’s board of trustees. Attendees tried to shout down Barber, who is a
member of Fair Education Santa Barbara, when she spoke out against the board’s
ban on reciting the Pledge of Allegiance during meetings.
SBCC board president Robert
Miller previously told Barber by email that
the pledge was banned because it contains the phrase “one nation under God” and
because it is “steeped in expressions of nativism and white nationalism.”
“There is nothing white
nationalist about the Pledge of Allegiance,” Barber told Fox.
“There’s no reference to race,
to gender to ethnicity. It’s all inclusive. That’s why school children around
the country, thousands of them recite it every day because it includes
everybody who lives in this country.”
Bad publicity forced the SBCC
to drop the ban. The college announced on
Facebook the day before Barber’s television appearance that the Pledge “will be
recited” at board meetings “until some future date when the matter may be
reconsidered by the Board.”
And Santa Barbara is just one
of many communities across America that has come under the control of radical
education theorists and practitioners.
College-Grad Salaries Eroded by Hidden Army of
1.5 Million Visa-Workers
Every
CEO in every company sees the business opportunity: Will I earn higher profits
by replacing my American staff with cheaper H-1B workers? The answer is an
obvious yes.
The
Washington-imposed economic policy of economic growth via mass-immigration
shifts wealth from young people towards older people by flooding the
market with foreign labor. That process spikes profits and Wall Street values by cutting salaries for manual and skilled labor offered by
blue-collar and white-collar employees. The policy also drives up real estate prices, widens wealth-gaps, reduces high-tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, hurts kids’ schools and college education, pushes Americans away from high-tech careers, and sidelines at least 5 million
marginalized Americans and
their families, including many who are now struggling with opioid addictions.
Adios, Sanctuary La Raza
Welfare State of California
A fifth-generation Californian laments his
state’s ongoing economic collapse.
By Steve Baldwin
American Spectator, October 19, 2017
What’s clear is that the producers are leaving the state and the takers are
coming in. Many of the takers are illegal aliens, now estimated to number over
2.6 million. The Federation for American
Immigration Reform estimates that California spends $22 billion on government
services for illegal aliens, including welfare, education, Medicaid, and
criminal justice system costs.
AMERICA:
MEXICO’S WELFARE STATE
… and in
exchange we get 40 million Mexican flag wavers, homelessness, a housing crisis,
heroin & opioid crisis and jobs for legals crisis…. ALL THANKS TO THE
DEMOCRAT PARTY
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2013/08/how-cheap-is-staggering-cost-of-mexicos.html
“Thirteen years after welfare
reform, the share of immigrant-headed households (legal and illegal) with a
child (under age 18) using at least one welfare program continues to be very
high. This is partly due to the large share of immigrants with low levels of education
and their resulting low incomes — not their legal status or an unwillingness to
work. The major welfare programs examined in this report include cash
assistance, food assistance, Medicaid, and public and subsidized housing.” Steven A. Camarota
“Thirteen
years after welfare reform, the share of immigrant-headed households (legal and
illegal) with a child (under age 18) using at least one welfare program
continues to be very high. This is partly due to the large share of immigrants
with low levels of education and their resulting low incomes — not their legal
status or an unwillingness to work. The major welfare programs examined in this
report include cash assistance, food assistance, Medicaid, and public and
subsidized housing.” Steven A. Camarota
ILLEGALS CLIMBING CALIFORNIA’S BORDERS FOR JOBS AND WELFARE:
SAN DIEGO … Mexicans (unregistered democrat anchor baby
breeders (1,877).
In just the month of October 2017 CBP Border Patrol San Diego
border sector reported apprehension of individuals from Bangladesh (12), Brazil (1),
Camaroon (3), Chad (1), China (16), El Salvador (76), Eritrea (7), Gambia (4),
Guatemala (178), Honduras (54), India (101), Iran (1), Mexico (1,877), Nepal (31),
Nicaragua (1), Pakistan (13), Peru (1), Somalia (1), and “Unknown”
(1) — a total of 2,379 individuals. These numbers are similar
to volumes seen in this sector
for October since 2012. MICHELLE MOONS
THE ONCE GOLDEN STATE of CALIFORNA, NOW A LA RAZA MEX WELFARE STATE, IS No. 48 OF 50 STATES IN LOWER EDUCATION!
MEXICANS LOATHE LITERACY AND ENGLISH… SUCH APES THE GRINGO WHOM THEY HATE!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2017/08/heres-reason-why-ca-schools-are-no.html
“Mexicans abhor
education. In their country, illiteracy dominates. As they arrive in our
country, only 9.6 percent of fourth generation Mexicans earn a high school
diploma. Mexico does not promote
educational values. This makes them the least educated of any Americans or
immigrants. The rate of illiteracy in Mexico stands at 63 percent." FROSTY
WOOLRIDGE
“Third-generation Latinos are more often
disconnected — that is, they neither attend school nor find employment.” Kay S. Hymowitz
IMPORTING ILLITERACY
TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED WE NEED
ENDLESS HORDES OF ILLITERATES JUMPING OUR BORDERS AND JOBS!
That really build a nation? Or
just generate “cheap” labor for fast food operators?
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2017/11/daca-fails-loathing-of-literacy-and.html
Pollak: Educating Illegal Aliens and Their Children Costs L.A.
Schools Hundreds of Millions Per Year
18 Jan 2019164
3:03
The ongoing strike by the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) union
against the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is about teacher pay,
classroom size, support staff, and especially charter schools, which the union
says take money away from the district.
Left unspoken, however, is the cost of educating illegal aliens,
and their children — which could amount to hundreds of millions of dollars per
year, if not billions, experts say.
Steven A. Camarota, director of research, at the Center for
Immigration Studies, told Breitbart News on Friday that “between one-fifth and
one-fourth of the students in LAUSD are the children of illegal immigrants —
though most of those were born in the U.S.” He said that a smaller percentage
of the students (“in the single digits”) are illegal immigrants themselves.
With
roughly 700,000
students in
the district, at a cost of over $13,000
per student,
that means the district could be spending about $1.8 billion annually on
educating the children of illegal immigrants. The total annual expenses for the
LAUSD in 2017-2018 amounted to $7.52 billion.
The
Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) put the cost of educating the
children of illegal aliens statewide at over $12 billion in a 2014 study. A significant proportion of
those students are served by the LAUSD.
Twenty years before, with a much lower population of illegal
aliens, the U.S. General Accounting Office — in a study prepared for then-Sen.
Barbara Boxer (D-CA) estimated that California spent $1.6 billion on educating
the children of illegal aliens. The cost has increased almost tenfold as the
“undocumented” population has grown.
The exact
numbers are elusive, but even a conservative estimate would put the costs of
educating the children of illegal aliens in the LAUSD in the same ballpark as
the costs of charter schools, which unions complain cost the district some
$600 million per year in lost funding.
The U.S.
Supreme Court held in Plyler
v. Doe (1982)
that students could not be denied a free public education on the basis of their
immigration status.
However, the continued arrival of illegal aliens has arguably
strained the public education system — and will continue to do so unless the
country’s borders are secured.
Yet no one in L.A. seems to be discussing the problem.
Joel
B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He is a winner of the
2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author
of How
Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from
Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
THE REAL
LATINO IN OUR SCHOOLS
Here’s one
teacher’s report on the illegals in our schools.
Subject: Cheap Labor?
This should make everyone think, be you Democrat, Republican or
Independent From a California school teacher.
"As you listen to the news about the student protests over
illegal immigration, there are some things that you should be aware
of: I am in charge of the English-as-a-second-language department at
a large southern California high school which is designated a Title 1 school,
meaning that its students average lower socioeconomic and income
levels. Most of the schools you are hearing about, South Gate High,
Bell Gardens, Huntington Park, etc., where these students are protesting, are
also Title 1 schools. Title 1 schools are on the free breakfast and
free lunch program. When I say free breakfast, I'm not talking a glass of milk
and roll -- but a full breakfast and cereal bar with fruits and juices that
would make a Marriott proud. The waste of this food is monumental, with trays
and trays of it being dumped in the trash uneaten. (OUR TAX DOLLARS AT
WORK) I estimate that well over 50% of these students are obese or
at least moderately overweight. About 75% or more DO have cell phones. The
school also provides day care centers for the unwed teenage pregnant girls
(some as young as 13) so they can attend class without the inconvenience of
having to arrange for babysitters or having family watch their kids. (OUR TAX
DOLLARS AT WORK) I was ordered to spend $700,000 on my department or
risk losing funding for the upcoming year even though there was little need for
anything; my budget was already substantial. I ended up buying new computers
for the computer learning center, half of which, one month later, have been
carved with graffiti by the appreciative students who obviously feel humbled
and grateful to have a free education in America. (OUR TAX DOLLARS A T
WORK) I have had to intervene several times for young and substitute
teachers whose classes consist of many illegal immigrant students here in the
country less then 3 months who raised so much hell with the female teachers,
calling them "Putas" whores and throwing things that the teachers
were in tears. Free medical, free education, free food, day care
etc., etc., etc. Is it any wonder they feel entitled to not only be in this
country but to demand rights, privileges and entitlements? To those who want to
point out how much these illegal immigrants contribute to our society because
they LIKE their gardener and housekeeper and they like to pay less for
tomatoes: spend some time in the real world of illegal immigration and see the
TRUE costs.
October 12, 2018
Why the Hispanic Education Gap?
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/10/why_the_hispanic_education_gap.html
An
article published by the Pew Research Center authored by Jens Manuel Krogstad,
titled "5 Facts about Latinos and Education," states,
"Hispanic dropout rate remains higher than that of Blacks, Whites, and
Asians." This hit home for me, because virtually no one else in
my family has a degree – college or otherwise.
Being
Hispanic, I find it nearly impossible to avoid hearing my own culture being
talked about in the media – especially now that DACA, the border wall, and
Trump are all being discussed, often in one sentence. The one thing
that is rarely talked about is our education system and how Hispanics keep
falling behind. The relationship between our culture and the
educational system needs restructuring.
Hispanic-Americans
are growing in numbers and in cultures. I use the term
"cultures" because Hispanics come in all races and backgrounds, and
because of this, they also have their own varying sets of traditions and
values. Latinos desire an education, but their actions do not
correlate with their aspirations. They want an education but do not
do what is necessary to obtain it. Hispanics are the
majority-minority group in America, yet they have the lowest level of
educational attainment of any major demographic slice of the
U.S. Latinos who do not come from an independent educational
tradition are the ones who get hurt.
There
is a disconnect between our society and our cultural beliefs. Most
Hispanics of my acquaintance understand the importance of getting an education,
but only in so far as it leads to immediate earnings to help take care of the
family. Often these two goals are in conflict, and families will
choose jobs over education. For many Hispanics, including me, a
drive for educational achievement was never something our families cared to
instill. My mother expressed the importance of learning another
language and going to school but always enforced getting a job and helping
support the family as the first priority.
As
the Pew article touched on, Latinos dream of going to college and often do, but
their culture does not push them toward it. Hispanics are told
things like: "That's not for you" or "You have to find a spouse
and have kids and raise them." Rarely are we told things like "Go
after your education." The few that do break from the cycle and
go to college run into a plethora of problems, ranging from the micro-fiduciary
issues to the macro-family issues.
Growing
up, I was always in competition with my cousin Joe, from elementary to high
school. We lived in the same household, and would compare
grades. I always felt inferior. Joe was always making the
grades I could not and reading books beyond his grade level. He
would often go above and beyond with his assignments to ensure an A in every
class. Joe had a thirst for knowledge, and anyone who spoke to him
instantly knew he was going to make something of himself. While he
was a shoe-in for a prestigious college, I would be lucky to get accepted
anywhere.
It
came as a big shock to my family and me when Joe dropped out of high
school. He dropped out because he was bored with the education he
was receiving and it felt like a waste of his time, getting something that
would not mean anything. He later decided to obtain his GED so he
could gain entry into a college for a real education.
Our
high school education system is not challenging our bright minds, but is
instead leading them into a vicious cycle of mediocrity. Over the
years, I found college banal and easy, not because I studied and changed my
ways, but because I took easy courses and easy professors who would help me
obtain that "piece of paper." As I moved up from freshman
to junior year, I noticed a steady decline in grades once I found myself in
more rigorous courses. I fell more and more behind when compared to
my peers. Subsequently, at the community college, my cousin was
bored with the same mediocre teaching methods that caused him to drop out of
high school. Therefore, it came as no surprise when he again dropped
out of school.
Our
paths at one point seemed so intertwined that it is hard to understand what
went wrong. I ultimately graduated, went on to graduate school, and
am now a university professor. Joe, on the other hand, continues to
progress through life without nurturing his natural intellectual
affinity. How did a smart kid, who was bound for success, fail at
something that was second nature to him? Experts keep claiming that
it is a money issue, but in fact, that is the smallest issue. The
big problem had to do with his education and culture.
Growing
up Hispanic, we are told things as children that stay with us through
adulthood. We are told family is everything. You
never turn your back on them and stay nearby because they will always be there
for you. Our parents tell us to want more but do not offer support
when we go after our educational dreams. Frequently, discouraging
remarks are made: "Why are you wasting your time with that, get a
job" or "You could be making money and starting a family." We
do not get a support network. I was able to see this subtle
influence only once I moved away to start grad school in Indiana, at Purdue
University.
I
was not a talented student, or even very smart. My family never
supported my choices or my dream of getting a degree. Sure, they
would say things like "go after it," but the moment it became an
inconvenience, they told me to stop. If it were not for a professor
who saw potential and took an interest in me, I might have been in Joe's shoes
now. My mentor pushed me and challenged me to be
better. Once I left my family, I began to see what was keeping me
down: it was my own beliefs and family. These traits are passed down
from one generation to another in a never-ending cycle. In order to
break that cycle and succeed, I turned my back on my culture and my family.
Joe
stayed close to the family around the same location where he grew
up. He got married, bought a house with his wife, and found jobs
that paid. Those jobs are not writing jobs, but they pay frequently
and often. He became a waiter and later a bartender. He
is able to pay his bills and go on trips. He did everything our
culture wanted him to do. All he had to do was give up on
his dreams of becoming a sports journalist. I, on the other hand,
was not ready to let mine go.
It
was years later that Joe told me he dropped out of college. He got
tired of students leaving after four years of college and knowing as much as
they did when they entered the classroom in year one. He got tired
of professors demanding the very minimum on assignments and giving him a B,
which for many colleges has become the new average. He continued,
"Why would I waste my time working hard to get the same grades as someone
who spends most of his time smoking, getting drunk, and not
studying? I thought college would be harder, but instead it is
exactly like high school." He wanted to be proud of himself and
to be around people who valued an education.
Joe
would not settle for anything less than a real education. It is
because of this that I get so upset that in a diverse class of 22 students,
with eight Hispanics on average, I will have five failing my
class. Too many Hispanics are failing college, and it is not because
they are stupid; it is cultural. My Latino students often give me
legitimate explanations as to why they cannot complete the course, but the
constant excuse is for family reasons. Joe would have been one of
the few Hispanics who would be passing a rigorous college-level course. Joe
was so skilled in a system that shortchanged him in high school and again in
college that he was not able to achieve more. He might have been a
great journalist, but who knows now?
Hispanic-Americans
need to start claiming our educational voices and talking about our educational
system. The problem is not money; it is our attitude toward our
education. Our system needs to know that we are not doing well, but
are indeed languishing behind. Our friends, family, and culture
should adapt, and parents need to be involved in their children's educational
outcomes. If Hispanics are in trouble, so are we all.
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